The present application is related and claims priority under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7 119 to Japanese Patent Application No. 11-131892, filed May 12, 1999, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus which conveys a component in order to pick and place the component.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a mounting process or the like of a component, a conveying apparatus is used in which the component is held from a component supply apparatus (also called a picking operation) and the component is put on a circuit board or the like (also called a placing operation). For example, the conveying of the component is performed in such a way that the head which absorbs a component moves reciprocally to the picking position and the placing position by a motor, as in unexamined-Japanese-patent-No. 5-63398 gazette. The conveying of the component is performed in such a way that a plurality of absorbing heads are provided to rotation boards, such as an index unit, and the rotation boards are rotated, as in the unexamined-Japanese-patent-No. 9-186193 gazette.
However, in this kind of conveyor, much energy is consumed at the time of driving, and the number of parts of the apparatus becomes great, and therefore they are large-sized. The control system is complicated, it becomes expensive, and the moving speed of the head is slow. The traveling time of the head is also long. There are those above described problems, and especially after holding a component at the picking position while it is conveyed to the placing position, the head is made to move and stop. However, movement is slow because of inertial mass, and peak velocity cannot be increased. Moreover, during a series of processes, because the traveling time is the greatest, sufficient time for the picking operation and the placing operation cannot be spent. Therefore, it has been difficult to perform reliable picking and a placing operations.
Consequently, the objective of this invention eliminates the above problems. There is provided a component conveyor driven based on a completely new principle.
According to a first exemplary embodiment, a component conveyor comprises a plurality of heads movable along a closed path for picking and placing operations of a component, means for stopping the plurality of heads at a picking position and a placing position, and means for transmitting the kinetic energy of a moving one of the plurality of heads to a stopped one of the plurality of heads at the picking position or the placing position, and for causing them to be mutually repelled, wherein, by applying an initial velocity in a progress direction along said closed path to at least one of the plurality of heads, the kinetic energy of said at least one head is transmitted to another one of the plurality of heads, and the at least one head is thereby made to stop at the position of the stopped head.
Still other objects, features, and attendant advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from a reading of the following detailed description of embodiments constricted in accordance therewith, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.